Colin

The post Dawn of the Dead zombie flick has become a well flogged horse scarred by clichés, mediocrity and plagiarism. It’s easy to see why horror fans have become jaded and bored of being fed the same shit year after year. What hope is there when the pioneer of the genre – George Romero – is insulting fans with sub par entries to the cannon like Survival of the Dead? Thankfully every now and then there’s a film that does something a little different and breaks out of the conventions.

In recent years I enjoyed Fido and Zombies Anonymous because they explored the idea of zombies living and interacting in human society. The undead’s arrival on the small screen with The Walking Dead was impressive too especially in regard to it bringing the effects on humanity to the forefront.

My interest perked up when reading the synopsis for Colin and how the story was from the zombie’s perspective. This interest was muted quite a bit by all the spam and a hype campaign that took a page out of the Lucifer Valentine (or whatever the fuck their name is) spammer’s handbook. Colin even made it onto TV news over here and its $75 (or whatever dubious total gets thrown around) budget was marvelled at. I’ve honestly got no idea why people were so amazed at this considering every year there’s plenty of no budget zombie flicks released.

I was dubious going into Colin after this hype/spam surrounding it and snippets of reviews stating shit like it was as “original, compelling and as thought provoking as Night of the Living Dead. Give me a break seriously. A solid independent production for sure (especially after a lot of the atrocities I’ve sat through over the years) with an interesting approach to the genre, but this is hardly the Citizen Kane of low budget zombie flicks.

The film concerns itself with Colin’s (Alastair Kirton) journey into the world of the undead following a fatal attack that causes his demise. We follow Colin as he wonders through the city and encounters different people that give an insight into his past including his sister who is convinced that somewhere inside this retched zombie her brother still lives.

Colin becomes muddled towards the end with its flashbacks and for me the film really starts to drag with its pacing in parts and could’ve done with another run though the editing software. The handheld camera gets quite annoying at times especially in the scenes where there’s conflict with the zombies. I understand that the director is going for a POV shot illustrating the confusion but at times it’s just a mess where you can’t see anything that’s going on.

The repeated reinforcement that it’s a film made for $75 is basically used as the flick’s get out of jail free card when any discussion of its flaws arises. I’ve found that kind of weird when I’ve talked to people about this film. Many people were quick to trash other low budget productions but Colin always gets a reprieve with “but he made it on his computer for $75”. My complaints aside Colin is a film that shows that Marc Price is a director with a lot of promise and it’s great to see a film thinking outside the square in its approach to genre conventions.